The Senate’s top Democrat called on the Department of Homeland Security Friday to work closely with state and local governments to defend against artificial intelligence-strengthened hacks. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to make sure state, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) governments aren’t left behind as AI models advance, posing new hacking threats.

“There is a race between cybersecurity defenders and AI-enabled hacking — and there’s no time to waste,” Schumer wrote.

“While the White House has reportedly begun hosting meetings about its internal security priorities following these frontier AI cyber breakthroughs, it is glaringly obvious that the Department of Homeland Security needs an updated plan for coordinating these efforts with [state, local, tribal and territorial] governments and implementing procedures to reduce the risk of disruptive cyberattacks enabled by frontier AI,” he stated.

Schumer said he was worried about the capabilities of DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to carry out that coordination, given federal funding cuts to the Multistate Information Sharing and Analysis Center, and the lack of a Senate-confirmed CISA director for the duration of the second Trump administration.

Schumer wants a plan from DHS by July 1 on coordinating with state and local governments on a range of questions, such as how to identify top AI talent, carry out rapid patching and conduct risk assessments.

“AI is changing the cyber battlefield fast — and we cannot let hackers get there first,” Schumer said in comments accompanying the letter. “Hospitals, power grids, water systems, schools, elections, and emergency services cannot be left exposed while criminal gangs and state-backed hackers race to exploit new AI tools. DHS must immediately help states and localities find and fix vulnerabilities before Americans are hit with outages, disruptions, and attacks that could put lives and livelihoods at risk.”

CISA is using AI to help on the defensive side internally, agency officials recently said.

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Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., warned Social Security Administration chief Frank Bisignano that any follow-through on President Donald Trump’s executive order creating a new database of U.S. voters using agency data would be viewed by Democrats as a conscious choice on the part of SSA officials to participate in “blatant voter suppression.”

“Facilitating Donald Trump’s directive to create a flawed voter database would be willing participation in blatant voter suppression ahead of consequential midterm elections,” Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote in a letter to Bisignano sent Friday.

The executive order, issued March 31, directs the Homeland Security secretary, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to compile lists of American voters for each state, including their supposed citizenship status.

To build the lists, the agencies would rely on the controversial Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database that DHS has been building under the Trump administration, as well as Social Security and federal citizenship and naturalization records.

Those lists would then be transmitted to states, most of which have already rejected previous Trump administration efforts to collect voter data or dictate voter registration lists. Another section of the order would direct the postmaster general to develop a similar state-by-state list of voters eligible to vote by mail.

“The clear intent of this executive order is to undermine vote-by-mail and disenfranchise eligible voters,” Wyden wrote. “SSA has a duty to ensure its data is not misused as part of this effort.”

Wyden echoed numerous state officials and election experts in calling the Trump administration’s executive order an unconstitutional encroachment by the executive branch on election authorities that the U.S. Constitution clearly delineates to Congress and the states.

The White House’s executive order has already been challenged in lawsuits from states officials and voting rights advocates, and a previous, less ambitious executive order issued last year that attempted to assert similar executive branch authorities was largely overturned by U.S. courts.

Wyden’s missive essentially asks Bisignano to consider whether following the Trump administration’s order would conflict with his responsibility to safeguard Social Security records under laws like the Privacy Act and the Social Security Act.

He asks how the agency will ensure it’s not disenfranchising voters, and whether it sought permission from citizens to use their Social Security data for a federal elections list, noting that the agency’s own regulations limit the sharing of Social Security data to “routine use for determining eligibility or amount of benefit in a health or income maintenance program.”

Expanding the agency’s role to elections — an area it has no background or experience in — would be in direct conflict with those rules.

“Simply put, sharing Americans’ personal data to DHS for creating a ‘state citizenship’ list does not meet this standard,” Wyden wrote.

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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that purports to limit mail-in voting, though critics say the move will almost certainly be challenged in court on constitutional grounds.

The order instructs the Homeland Security secretary, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to compile lists of American voters for each state, including their supposed citizenship status.

To build the lists, the agencies would rely on the controversial Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements database that DHS has been building under the Trump administration, as well as Social Security and federal citizenship and naturalization records.

Those lists would then be transmitted to states, most of which have already rejected previous Trump administration efforts to collect voter data or dictate voter registration lists. The White House order instructs the Department of Justice to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of state and local officials or any others involved in the administration of federal elections who issue federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote in a federal election.  

The order also directs the postmaster general to issue new proposed regulations that require mail-in ballots to be mailed in special envelopes that include barcodes for tracking. Crucially, it asks states ahead of time whether they intend to submit a list of voters eligible to vote by mail, and attempts to assert the authority to deny sending ballots to states that do not participate. It also claims the attorney general is entitled to withhold federal funding from noncompliant states.

The Trump administration’s previous efforts to aggressively assert executive branch authority over elections have been rebuffed by courts, with judges noting the U.S. Constitution explicitly empowers states and Congress to set the time, manner and place for elections. 

The order justifies White House involvement by claiming it has “an unavoidable duty” under Article II of the Constitution to maintain confidence in election outcomes by preventing violations of criminal law. But numerous post-election audits, investigations and recounts have consistently confirmed over decades that criminal non-citizen voting is infinitesimally rare in U.S. elections, and for the small number that did, most turn out to be accidents or decades-old administrative errors.

Criticism from election officials, experts and Democrats in Congress was swift.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, who has resisted demands by the DOJ to hand over state voter data, predicted the order “will meet the same fate” as previous executive orders in being struck down by courts. Other secretaries of state have issued similar statements rejecting the order’s constitutionality. 

“Our office has helped stop his actions before and we are now exploring our legal options to stop this new order from taking effect,” Simon said in a statement to CyberScoop.

He also stumped for mail-in voting, calling it a secure, trustworthy and convenient way for citizens to exercise their rights to vote. Local election officials “track every ballot” sent by mail and have a range of checks and safeguards to ensure they’re sent to only eligible voters and that voters can only cast one ballot.

“Absentee voters who choose to vote by mail must provide a matching ID number, sign their signature envelope, and have a witness sign their ballot envelope before returning their ballot,” Simon said. “All of that information is tracked digitally by election administrators. Voters are able to track the status of their ballot using our online ballot tracker tool. Any attempt to register or cast a ballot while ineligible is referred for investigation and potential prosecution.”

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., called the order a “blatant, unconstitutional abuse of power” and said he expected “immediate” lawsuits challenging its legality.

“The President and the Department of Homeland Security have no authority to commandeer federal elections or direct the independent Postal Service to undermine mail and absentee voting that nearly 50 million Americans relied on in 2024,” Padilla said in a statement. “A decade of lies about election fraud does not change the Constitution.”

David Becker, executive director for the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the administration’s latest mandates are so far outside the constitutional limits of the executive branch they will almost certainly be halted through lawsuits. 

“Some may freak out about this, but honestly, this is hilarious,” Becker wrote on Bluesky. “It’s clearly unconstitutional, will be blocked immediately, and the only thing it will accomplish is to make liberal lawyers wealthier. He might as well sign an EO banning gravity.”

However, while lower courts have consistently struck down previous orders and lawsuits from the White House, election experts have expressed concerns that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority — which has clashed with lower courts over the Trump administration’s constitutional authority — appeared receptive to the administration’s position in a recent oral argument.

Alexandra Chandler, director of the Free and Fair Elections program at nonprofit Protect Democracy, said in a statement that the White House order “is more like an attempted executive override” of state authority over elections.

“Meant to solve for a problem that exists only in the false rhetoric of the Trump administration and its political fortunes, the [order] is a classic example of their playbook to deceive the American people and disrupt the election process in order to deny any future results that don’t suit them,” Chandler said.

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A year-long effort to strengthen cybersecurity and modernize tech at U.S. intelligence agencies has led to policy standards for using AI to bolster cyber defenses, a shared repository of all apps that have undergone a cybersecurity review and more, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced Thursday.

An unclassified summary of cyber and tech modernization work under the first year of DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s stewardship states that the office has expanded the automation of threat hunting across intelligence community networks. (The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency conducts threat hunting across federal civilian agencies.)

The ODNI also has developed a zero-trust strategy that shifts “to a data-centric security model that protects information regardless of location or network,” according to the summary.

“Over the past year, we have taken meaningful steps to begin fulfilling that responsibility through the largest IC-wide technology investment and modernization effort in history,” Gabbard said in a news release. “President Trump’s Intelligence Community is moving faster and more decisively on cybersecurity modernization and investments in IT than ever before, delivering stronger defenses, greater efficiency, and real cost savings for the American people.”   

It constitutes the first significant cybersecurity announcement out of the office under Gabbard and the second Trump administration.

While the year-long effort began before the recent release of a national cyber strategy, the ODNI initiatives reflect many of its goals, including better protection of federal networks, advancing artificial intelligence for defensive purposes and going on offense against cyber adversaries.

The ODNI directed its National Counterintelligence and Security Center “to proactively combat foreign intelligence actors seeking to engage in cyber-attacks against U.S. interests,” according to the summary. 

The idea of an intelligence community repository of cybersecurity authorizations is to save both time and money, as it would allow agencies to capitalize on the testing of apps that other agencies have done without having to repeat them. 

On AI, the ODNI is “developing the policy framework, governance, and standards necessary to accelerate AI adoption for cybersecurity and other critical technology,” the summary states.

“Protecting our nation’s most sensitive information from those who seek to exploit it, while making sure our intelligence professionals have the tools and access they need to do their jobs, is not optional. It is essential to our national security,” Gabbard said. 

Gabbard’s appearance earlier this year during an FBI search of an elections office in Georgia has drawn congressional scrutiny, an appearance she has defended in part by citing her office’s role in coordinating and analyzing intelligence related to cybersecurity. Gabbard’s own personal cybersecurity practices prior to taking the job of DNI have also raised questions.

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A California county sheriff and Republican contender for the state’s gubernatorial race has seized 650,000 physical ballots from Riverside County, saying they were part of an investigation into election fraud tied to redistricting wars.

State officials and election security experts say that the underlying allegations are spurious and local law enforcement do not have the authority to unilaterally investigate or validate election results.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said at a news conference Friday that he intended to conduct a hand count of the ballots, which were tied to elections last November, and “compare that result to the total votes recorded.”

In a March 6 letter, California Attorney General Rob Bonta directed Bianco to pause the investigation until the state could review “the factual and legal basis” for the probe and seizure.

Based on an initial review of the warrants and affidavits in the case, Bonta wrote that his “office has serious concerns as to whether probable cause existed to support the issuance of the warrants, and whether your office presented the magistrate with all available evidence as required by law.” 

While Bonta’s letter does not describe the underlying content of the search warrants, it points to a public presentation made by a resident at a Feb. 10 Riverside County Registrar of Voters meeting that “addresses the alleged vote discrepancy that appears to be the basis of your investigation.”

In that meeting, an individual identifying himself as “Errol” — wearing a “Trump 2028” hat — alleged the council had participated in local, state and federal election fraud.

At several points, the individual said he relied on Google for information on individuals and companies he was accusing of receiving improper payments. At another point, he claimed the Riverside County auditor would not disclose the purpose behind thousands of pages of county payments, before saying “you’re not getting the files, I got them put away.”

“We have a lot of problems, you guys. You’ve committed serious fraud here, forever,” the individual alleged, adding that he hoped the members of the council were imprisoned.

Bonta accused Bianco of “flagrantly violating my directives” under the California State Constitution, and threatened court action should he proceed with the investigation and hand recount.

The act by Bianco — who is running third in the state’s open primary for governor this month, per an Emerson College poll — is the second such seizure of ballots to take place this election cycle, following the FBI’s raid of Fulton County, Georgia’s election office.

Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center for Justice, told CyberScoop that the election allegedly being investigated wasn’t a close race. Further, like virtually every other election, candidates or parties have opportunities to contest irregularities or results, including automatic recounts or recounts paid by candidates or campaigns — along with state courts that regularly adjudicate questions of election outcomes.

“It’s important for people to know none of those processes involve someone coming in and haphazardly coming in and grabbing the ballots,” she said, adding: “I worry if it happens closer to an actual election what it could do to interfere with it.”

Ramachandran said that by seizing physical ballots, which she called “the gold standard” we use for determining ground-level truth about voter intent, Bianco was disrupting the chain of custody that is one of the key processes designed to give voters trust in their elections.

“It should just be a really high bar, not just, ‘I’m suspicious, I want to do a fishing expedition,’” she said. “That’s not enough to have someone who doesn’t have any experience in counting ballots or keeping them safe [to] just come in and grab all that stuff.”

Bonta’s suggestion that Bianco did not materially inform the courts echoes what Fulton County officials alleged in their own lawsuit, which accused the FBI of presenting the judge with a “flagrantly misleading narrative” that omitted key evidence, undermining the government’s basis for investigating the 2020 ballots. 

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“Decimated.” 

“Amateur hour.”

“Pretty much fallen apart.”

“It’s really hard to find something positive to say right now.”

It’s been a little more than one year into the second Trump administration, and there’s a large consensus, if not total unanimity, among those who have worked with and for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency: It has suffered significantly during that time. 

CISA has lost roughly a third of its personnel and shuttered entire divisions. Observers across the political spectrum told CyberScoop for this story that even on its core missions, like coordinating with industry and protecting federal networks, the agency is significantly diminished.

Many sources that spoke with CyberScoop did so under the condition of anonymity, in order to be more candid or avoid retribution. They told CyberScoop that CISA’s biggest problems, and their consequences, include:

• Trump’s ire over the 2020 election results has led to the agency being deprioritized within the administration. Congress has yet to approve the administration’s permanent pick to lead the agency, Sean Plankey, and lawmakers have failed to do other things to strengthen it. 
• CISA’s capabilities have been significantly diminished by the loss of personnel, expertise and programs. 
• In the absence of a permanent leader, Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala has struggled to lead the agency. “I don’t think anybody would argue he’s doing a great job,” one industry source said.
• Organizations that previously turned to CISA for help now seek alternatives, like industry alliances, outside consultants or government-to-government partnerships.

Where to assign blame varied from source to source. Most criticized both the administration and Congress, though some faulted one more than the other.

Some see bright spots in CISA under the current administration. And while many are pessimistic about the agency’s future, others expressed optimism.

But the first year reviews are not glowing.

“Year one was a tough year for the agency,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y. He noted that a “lot of the best and brightest have left the agency,” though he expressed optimism about Plankey’s ability to turn CISA around. “The amount of cyberattacks that our nation is seeing every day, both on the private side and on the federal government side — you want your best people there fighting against it, and if they’re somewhere else, it definitely leaves us all vulnerable.”

Said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on Garbarino’s panel: “It’s tough to have a robust entity when you cut the money…we are weaker because of CISA’s lack of manpower.”

When priorities shifted

Trump has harbored animosity toward CISA since 2020, when it contradicted his false claims related to widespread electoral fraud. He and his allies built on that animosity, recommending in Project 2025 that the agency be dismantled, divided by its core responsibilities, and farmed out to other federal agencies. 

“There was uniquely a target on its back,” said one CISA official who left in 2025. That hostility came from some Republicans in Congress, especially Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Said Thompson: “CISA wasn’t politicized for the most part, until the Trump administration came along and accused them of somehow contributing to his [election] loss.”

CISA has lost substantial personnel, including veterans and whole teams. Some employees were transferred to other divisions in the Department of Homeland Security. Election security was quickly cut. Two information sharing and analysis centers (ISACs) that serve state and local governments lost funding. A division coordinating with foreign governments, businesses and state and local governments was effectively closed.

The agency has lost senior leaders in programs like counter-ransomware initiatives, threat hunting and secure software development. Contracts for things like detecting threats in critical infrastructure networks, tracking vulnerabilities and collaborating with industry teetered, albeit sometimes only temporarily. 

DHS has unraveled multiple programs in which CISA plays a key role, such as by dismissing members of the Cyber Safety Review Board and disbanding the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council. Congress has lurched between letting both a key state and local cyber grant program and a cyber threat information sharing law lapse and temporarily re-upping them.

The departures and program changes likely haven’t ended, either. 

“It’s not a very harmonious place right now,” said one industry source. “I hear from people that are looking to leave.” Former CISA employees say those who remain either believe strongly in the mission, or are simply keeping their heads down until retirement from federal service.

“People I talk to say the morale is really low,” said James Lewis, distinguished fellow with the tech policy program at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank.

CISA and DHS officials routinely say the changes are designed to get the agency “back on mission.” Lewis, industry officials and others say CISA probably never needed to get involved in combatting misinformation and disinformation, roles that rankled some conservatives, but the agency largely halted that work prior to Trump returning to office.

Some saw duplication and redundancy at CISA as legitimate problems. “I did see overlap between who was actually doing policy and who was actually doing the operational work,” said Ari Schwartz, managing director of cybersecurity services at the law firm Venable and a former Obama administration cybersecurity official.

It was not that long ago when CISA experienced quick budget growth, particularly after its establishment in 2018.

“As with any organization, the first few years are growth years and after a while, the agency needed to reevaluate how it was operating and meeting its statutory authorities,” said Kate DiEmidio, who formerly served as the agency’s director of legislative affairs and acting chief external affairs officer. “There was a need for the agency to refocus.”

Even among those who saw the need for change at CISA, though, many saw the Trump administration as going way too far. “CISA needed surgery,” Lewis said, but “what it needed was surgery with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.” He added, “Not only is the White House hostile to CISA, but cybersecurity isn’t a priority for them.”

A question of capacity

The cuts have created real-world consequences for cybersecurity coordination. Former officials and industry partners describe broken relationships, unanswered requests for help and serious questions about whether CISA can handle a major crisis. The coordination and engagement that defined the agency’s approach have largely diminished.

The end result is that “they’ve dismantled all of those capabilities in units within government,” said Caitlin Durkovich, a former DHS official in the Obama administration and White House official in the Biden administration. She recently started a firm with former top CISA official Jeff Greene that offers services CISA has scaled back, such as security assessments.

“It’s been really hard to watch,” Greene said, how CISA has been working with the private sector and local governments on “developing a level of trust that is weakening or gone.”

One industry source said they used to meet regularly with top officials, but now can’t get a response. “We’ve got really good engagement elsewhere in government. We really would like the opportunity to do the same thing with CISA,” they said. “Some of the trust that had been built up has been eroded.”

Thompson said the biggest losses have been in election security and secure-by-design, areas where his staff says personnel has been “decimated.”

Said another industry source: “I do feel like that when people, if organizations, want to reach out to CISA, it’s not clear who’s there… If we got into a major conflict, let’s say, with China, and they start triggering Volt Typhoon-related malware, are we organized and ready to roll? I don’t think so.”

Another former CISA official described the current situation as a “lack of capacity,” especially when it comes to coordinating with state and local governments and others on a regional basis.

“A bunch of regions are really grappling with the loss of really key personnel who were the ones that were establishing and maintaining these relationships, and really trying to build the trust between the agency and the private sector, and especially in critical infrastructure,” they said. “Not having as many people to help do that national coordinating function that CISA is supposed to do is a real issue.”

They also said there are fewer people working in “flagship programs” like secure-by-design and developing regulations for the landmark Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 (CIRCIA). “People are overstretched,” they said. “They’re not doing all the things that they could or should be doing, or want to be doing, and I think that you see evidence of that with talk from the private sector and their inability to to reach people and to get help “

Schwartz said he worries about when “an incident happens, do they have the people to go in, go to the states, go locally, and really do the work that’s needed, as they did in the past? Because they’ve lost some of that ability.”

Lewis said that “overall, the impression is it’s a much weaker entity than it was a year ago.”

“Their power was in their ability to act as a focal point, to coordinate, to bring people together, and just the publication of vulnerabilities and some of the things they were starting to get into in the previous administration were big steps forward that’s been diminished because they don’t have the people now,” he said. “So a smaller organization, that’s just not going to be as powerful.”

State and local governments say they’ve lost critical connections with CISA, saying they’ve had to turn to one another to fill the gaps.

“We’re asking states to do a job they’re not resourced to do, while weakening the one federal agency designed to help them,” said Errol Weiss, chief security officer at the Health-ISAC. “This is precisely where you do need a strong, centralized federal security function. We already have a national shortage of cybersecurity experts, and you can’t just replicate that expertise 50 times over.”

Overall, Weiss said industry partners have felt the lack of outreach from the agency. “Fewer touchpoints, fewer briefings, fewer problem‑solving calls,” he told CyberScoop, adding that there’s “a growing perception that CISA is being hollowed out where it matters most to industry: stakeholder engagement, collaborative forums, and operational support during incidents.”

Rob Knake, a former top Biden administration official, recently said that “CISA as an organization has pretty much fallen apart.”

Leadership in limbo

One near-universal sentiment is that as Sean Plankey’s leadership nomination drags in the Senate, the agency is worse off.

“We need to start this year off right, and we’re already in February and can’t get Plankey confirmed,” Garbarino said. “There’s nothing better than having a Senate-confirmed person running the show.”

The acting director has also faced criticism beyond the operational issues. Gottumukkala, who served as South Dakota’s chief information officer under Kristi Noem before she became DHS secretary, has faced fire from both parties for his stewardship.

A string of embarrassing stories have emerged about Gottumukkala, from the tale of him failing a polygraph test and seeking to oust those who administered it; to his reported attempted ouster of veteran agency CIO Robert Costello; to his reported uploading of sensitive contract data to ChatGPT. DHS has defended Gottumukkala amid those revelations.

Reading stories like that, “It just sounds like amateur hour,” said one former CISA employee.

“I don’t think he’s up to the task. I believe that he’s not the best person, and I think he is just somebody the secretary likes, because they both are from South Dakota.” Thompson said. “I don’t know anybody before this administration who would be in sensitive areas and not have passed minimal standards like the polygraph.”

The ChatGPT story drew concern from the right by Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, as well as from conservative figure Laura Loomer (the latter of whose remarks were racially tinged). Others were more perturbed by the lie detector story.

“When you have security issues with someone in a leadership position, you should find another place for them to go,” said a former Trump administration national security official. “There are plenty of competent people in DHS, in CISA, who could hold things together until Sean Plankey gets there. There are lots of serious things CISA needs to be working on right now. This is a drag on that. It’s not a place where you want any type of friction at the top.”

Garbarino was more generous, noting Gottumukkala’s technical background. DiEmidio also noted Gottumukkala’s technical skills. But Garbarino and Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei, the GOP chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, have been seeking CISA’s organizational plans to no avail.

“I don’t think he’s intentionally lying to us by saying there’s no reorg plan,” Garbarino said. “But there’s got to be some reasoning behind all these moves, moving the people around, or layoffs or whatever. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt that he is the technical guy that has been given a non-technical job to do.”

Schwartz and some others largely blame Congress for CISA’s current woes, since they haven’t approved Plankey as a full-time, permanent leader. “A lot of the issue is the fact that just doesn’t have the leadership to be able to participate in senior-level discussions,” he said.

What’s left to build on

Despite myriad complaints, many observers still see value in the current iteration of CISA. Some are hopeful about its ability to rebound, too.

CISA says it’s still devoted to its missions. The agency published a 2025 year-in-review about its accomplishments.

“CISA remains steadfast in its mission to safeguard the systems Americans rely on by strengthening federal network defenses, empowering businesses, and fortifying critical infrastructure nationwide,” Gottumukkala said in a statement to CyberScoop.

Moving forward, “we will deepen collaboration with trusted partners, prioritize highly skilled technical professionals, and direct resources for maximum impact—accelerating innovation, operational coordination, and workforce right-sizing to reduce long-term risks while maintaining strong industry partnerships and cost efficiency,” he said. “The CISA leadership and workforce remains committed to this mission despite a small minority who are upset that accountability and reform have come to the agency.”

It’s a message Gottumukkala recently delivered to Congress. “He tried to give the impression that we haven’t lost any capacity,” Thompson said. “I wasn’t impressed.”

Others said CISA is still carrying out many of its old tasks, such as issuing public alerts on vulnerabilities and threats.

“There’s still some good reporting coming out,” Greene said. “But what I can’t know is the volume of what they can put out versus what they used to be able to put out.”

Weiss said “CISA still has tremendous value in areas only the federal government can truly provide: national‑level visibility, cross‑sector coordination and the ability to marshal resources across agencies in a crisis.” But it’s not clear whether CISA can rise to the occasion like it did during the 2024 Change Healthcare crisis.

“All of this means it’s more important than ever for the private sector to take the initiative,” he said. “Critical infrastructure owners and operators cannot assume the federal government will have the capacity to step in the way it once did.”

Weiss and others also said that CISA has refocused on federal networks, but others, such as Lewis, said it’s also diminished there. “That’s their primary mission, and they don’t have the policies or the bodies to do that,” Lewis said.

Garbarino and a number of industry sources say they’re encouraged by the idea that the Trump administration could write less onerous regulations for CIRCIA, with an earlier draft drawing bipartisan and industry criticism.

A Senate-confirmed leader could further brighten the agency’s prospects, many agree. “They still have some good talent there. It’s not totally that we’ve lost everything there,” Schwartz said. “If you have leadership in there, then you can build it up.”

DiEmidio said some of the staff changes have made sense. Election security had more people than other sectors that needed the help, she said. 

“In some ways, I think the external attention to CISA’s mission in the media and with Congress was completely focused on one or two things, and the focus on the things that really matter, and the good work that CISA is doing got overshadowed,” she said. For the agency’s cybersecurity division and other cyber teams, “there were several incidents over the summer where those teams were incredible. They were working evenings, weekends.”

But many agree that rebuilding CISA’s workforce will be difficult.

The Trump administration has deliberately made working for the federal government challenging as a matter of policy. Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, said before the election that the goal was to put federal workers “in trauma.” Morale at CISA has been particularly bad, they say. Periodic DHS shutdowns haven’t helped.

On the plus side for CISA, it’s a bad labor market, Lewis said.

Some of what CISA needs to do going forward is about managing expectations, said DiEmidio.

“What I would want to make sure is that CISA has a hiring plan in place to start hiring, especially in those key technical positions at all levels,” she said. “ I think you have to have an understanding that people are going to rotate in and out of government. Not everyone wants to stay in government long term and that’s okay.”

But there are some worries about CISA recruiting going forward. “Just the way they handle the departures, for a lot of folks, I don’t think it gives a lot of encouragement to individuals that ‘Hey, this is a great place to work,’” said one former DHS official.

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A former federal official who tested and certified voting machines used in Fulton County, Georgia for the 2020 presidential election told a court that the federal government misrepresented key facts and omitted exculpatory public evidence while seeking a warrant in last month’s law enforcement raid.

The raid, carried out by the FBI and overseen by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, saw agents seize ballots and other documentation from the Fulton County election offices. A public affidavit cited five core allegations related to the county’s recordkeeping, electronic ballot image storage,  and election night reporting. Authorities allege these issues point to a potential conspiracy to intentionally manipulate the vote count in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.

Fulton County officials sued the federal government in response, arguing that the affidavit used to obtain a warrant for the raid “does not identify facts that establish probable cause that anyone committed a crime.”

Another filing includes sworn testimony from Ryan Macias, an elections expert who tested and certified the county’s voting machines while at the Election Assistance Commission. In his testimony, Macias told the court that the government’s key claims have already been investigated and have been found to be baseless.  

He said the FBI’s “many individual omissions and misstatements” in its affidavit reflect “gross mischaracterizations” of how elections work and directly contradict the conclusions of multiple prior investigations into the Nov. 2020 election in Fulton County.

“Once the statements and omissions in the Affidavit are corrected and based on my experience administering elections, the Affidavit does not have a substantial basis in reality,” Macias stated.

For instance, the FBI’s affidavit cites the absence of scanned images of all 527,925 ballots for the original count and recount. But Macias, who served as an adviser to Fulton County and witnessed pre and post-election operations in 2020, said this was standard practice.  Jurisdictions typically send only the vote count records from their machines on election night, because ballot images and audit logs are much larger files that can slow down the reporting process.

Macias also notes that the FBI affidavit omits that this issue was already investigated by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who found Georgia election workers weren’t required by law to preserve such images until a state law passed in 2021.

An investigator from Raffensperger’s office later told the Board of Elections that “it was “important to note that ballots can be scanned and tabulated without capturing ballot images,” while general counsel Charlene McGowan testified that ballot images play no role in the vote tabulation process and Fulton County’s paper ballots – counted three times – were the “most important” documents to verify the count.

“These explanations about the storing of ballot images have been publicly available for some time,” Macias noted.

Similarly, the FBI cites instances where some Fulton County ballots were scanned multiple times, claiming it shows evidence of “an intentional tabulation of ballots in a false matter” to make the recount and original vote counts match. The bureau also pointed to small, non-determinative differences between the county’s machine recount and totals from a hand-counted risk-limiting audit.

But the federal government again failed to mention in its petition for a warrant that these claims were “exhaustively” investigated by the Secretary of State’s office, which found the errors were benign, the duplicates weren’t counted, and did not impact the final vote count in the state’s count of the 2020 presidential contest.

According to Macias, the government’s affidavit also contains errors about basic facts about Fulton County’s reporting process. This includes misreporting the correct official vote count and the date and time it was transmitted to state officials for tabulation.

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Republicans in Congress are moving ahead with two pieces of legislation this week that would dramatically reshape the nation’s election laws.

Together, the SAVE America Act and MEGA Act would shift key voter certification powers to the executive branch,  require stricter proof of citizenship for voter registration, and allow states to more easily access federal immigration databases to track and remove “potential” or “suspected” noncitizens from voter rolls.

The SAVE America Act passed through the Rules Committee late Tuesday on a 9-4 partisan split, teeing up a full house vote on the bill. The bill would require voters to use a passport, birth certificate or REAL ID to register to vote and requires voters to prove their identity and citizenship in person.

Changes to the committee bill include a new section requiring states to send lists of all eligible voters to the Department of Homeland Security’s Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements database and placing the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration at the head of a federal voter citizenship certification process.

Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said a manager’s amendment filed overnight would also exempt overseas military voters and their families from in-person identification requirements and make the law effective immediately.

Additionally on Tuesday, the House Committee on Administration held a hearing on another bill, the MEGA Act, also sponsored by Steil. That bill would discount all mail-in ballots received after the close of polls on Election Day, require the Attorney General to certify election funding for states, and authorize the AG to sue states that don’t comply with federal election requirements.

It would also allow private individuals to sue any election official “who registers an applicant to vote in an election for Federal office who fails to present documentary proof of United States citizenship.”

The data tells a different story

Steil cast counting ballots past Election Day as untrustworthy, comparing it to playing a corrupt card game.

“Imagine if you went to a casino and played cards and you’re playing with the dealer, and at the very end…the dealer says ‘You know what, I’m not going to flip over my cards for three or four days,’ ” he said. “You could be playing with the pope and you wouldn’t have a lot of confidence in exactly what is taking place.”

But the delays in counting ballots in three states in the 2020 election – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – had a clear explanation: state laws prevented election officials from processing mail-in ballots until Election Day or the day before, forcing them to prioritize in-person votes first before moving to mail-in ballots – which ended up leaning heavily Democratic.

New research from the Center for Election Integrity and Research released this week found that many claims of suspected noncitizen voting are wildly inflated when investigated. Executive director David Becker said the data gives “a very good sense of the depth of the problem” around noncitizen voting, which he called “infinitesimally rare.”

“President Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security has checked more than 49 million voter records, and they themselves admit that 99.98% of those records represented confirmed citizens,” Becker said in a statement. “In several states that are politically aligned with President Trump, the number of alleged noncitizen voters has precipitously dropped when subjected to scrutiny.”

 Congressional Democrats unanimously opposed the bills, arguing they would disenfranchise legal voters in an effort to address a problem that post-election audits show  is exceedingly rare.

Rep.  Julie Johnson, D-Texas, said Congress must respect “the fundamental constitutional right of every citizen to cast a ballot.” That obligation would affect citizens without birth certificates or passports married women who have changed their names, and voters with limited access to election offices where they must provide citizenship in person.

“The problem with this bill is you’re putting all these administrative burdens in place to keep citizens from voting,” she said, adding later that “it is unamerican, unconstitutional, and just dead ass wrong.”

A decade of finger pointing 

It’s not clear what authorities or figures Steil was citing to justify the bill. For instance, approximately 98 percent of voters already cast their ballot on voting machines with a paper backup record.

Further, election experts don’t say winners must be declared on Election Day. Many argue the opposite: that calling races too early—or refusing to count ballots legally postmarked on Election Day but take days to arrive-—can disenfranchise legitimate voters.

The MEGA Act has support from GOP-controlled states. Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray told lawmakers Tuesday it would impose “baseline common sense standards” for elections nationwide. Gray also said he stood “in complete support of” President Trump’s March 2025 executive order on elections—though major sections of that order have since been struck down by courts for being unconstitutional. 

 After the 2016 election, Republicans resisted national election administration laws, arguing states should control election administration. 

Now, they face similar arguments about their legislative package.

Rep.  Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said it was “preposterous that the same Republicans who spent their entire careers demanding that states – not the federal government, states – should run their elections are now suddenly begging for federal intervention.”

Karen Brinson Bell, who led North Carolina’s State Board of Elections until last year, warned that the bill’s rigid photo ID mandates would override current systems even in most states—even those that already have voter ID laws. She also said the requirements would impose   a one-size-fits-all approach on election systems that have diverse, locally driven needs.

 “The needs of communities in Wyoming differ from those in Michigan and North Carolina,” Brinson Bell said. “Decentralized election administration is a feature, not a bug, of our democratic system.”

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It’s no secret that the Trump administration has radically altered the federal government’s relationship with state election officials since being sworn into power last year.

While his first term included the creation of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the distribution of hundreds of millions in congressional funding sent to help states upgrade election security, Trump’s second term has so  far been more adversarial toward states.

As CyberScoop and others have reported, CISA has scaled back its election security support – in some cases shuttering work on topics like disinformation — while firing or sidelining election security specialists at the agency. The administration is also pursuing voter data from all 50 states, an effort that has been called “unprecedented and illegal” by one court. 

Congressional Democrats, including California Sen. Alex Padilla, have been sharply critical of the federal government’s support for elections under the second Trump administration.

Cuts to CISA’s funding and staff, combined with the absence of dedicated congressional funding for election security grants, have “created a scenario where states may feel a lot more like they’re going it alone than as opposed to working in partnership,” said Padilla. The current senator served as Secretary of State for California before being appointed in 2021 to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein. 

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes was discussing the status of a $650,000 package moving through the Arizona legislature with an aide when CyberScoop approached him for an interview at the National Association of Secretaries of State winter conference.

Fontes said the spending package (which passed later that day) would help Arizona patch vulnerabilities and recover from last year’s cyberattack on the state’s online portal for political candidates. The attack also defaced state websites with pro-Iranian propaganda.

The $650,000 appropriation is part of a larger $3.4 million pool the legislature approved last year to strengthen cybersecurity in the state’s election system ahead of a special election in the 7^th congressional district. Because turnout in that election was low, some of the money was left unspent and would otherwise go unused. Fontes said his office made a  “very clear” case in a December letter outlining the significant investments Arizona still needs to make to secure its elections.

The money, while welcome, “is not going to go anywhere near supporting all the other programs that we need for elections to go well,” he said.

“We were saying ‘Hey, let us use [the leftover money] for elections, let us rebuild our cybersecurity infrastructure’… that’s $2.8 million dollars worth of other stuff that would help counties,” said Fontes.

Arizona is one of several states scrambling to find new ways to pay for election security as the federal government pulls back.  States are now relying on just $45 million in federal election security grant funding from the Election Assistance Commission— less than $1 million per state on average— while election-security expertise at CISA has been sharply reduced. 

Some states are turning to local sources to fill in gaps in information sharing. West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner told CyberScoop he had just completed his first tour of all 55 country clerks in the state.

“They all have cell phone numbers for me, for Dave [Tackett, chief information officer] and my chief of staff,” Warner said. “We’re in close contact if there’s a concern [around] the risks and points of entry that may affect all of us.”

Last year, Warner’s office helped distribute $272,000 in Help America Vote Act (HAVA) grant funding to six counties, who added another $323,000 in matching funds, to upgrade voting systems, enhancing ID printer capabilities to strengthen voter identification procedures and other tasks.

A lack of poll workers is one of the state’s biggest challenges ahead of this year’s elections. Warner’ said his office is backing several bills to address it, including one that would create a new tax credit for poll workers  and another that would let 15- or 16-year-olds  receive poll worker training.

The White House and federal officials have attempted to downplay reports of a fraying relationship. In January, acting CISA Director Madhu Gottumukkala told Congress that claims DHS or CISA have rolled back their election security practices were “not accurate,” citing ongoing support to states around cybersecurity support, physical security guidance, incident response services and threat briefings.

“We treat election security like any other infrastructure sector and our election security services remain fully in place,” he said.

That statement directly contradicts what many state and local officials have said over the past year: that communication and support from CISA and the federal government have either shrunk or are completely absent compared to previous election cycles.

According to Brenna Nelson of the National Conference of State Legislatures, CISA performed 1,300 physical security assessments, 700 cybersecurity assessments and 500 election security trainings for election jurisdictions across the country since 2023. Support and services related to cybersecurity that election offices have used for the past seven years are “less available” now, as “the agency is not prioritizing elections in the same way it has since 2017.”

For many state officials, the change from CISA came suddenly and with no warning, giving them little time to make alternative plans. Speaking to StateScoop last year, New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said “we didn’t even have the foreknowledge to be able to relay to our legislature that we were going to be losing out on a lot of these tools and resources.”

Tackett, said cyber hygiene scans were the only recurring services they relied on CISA for, and the office has become proficient in tapping other local or regional sources — like information sharing and analysis centers, fusion centers, local university research centers and the National Guard – for no cost services around election security.

Because of this, Tackett said the state’s relationship with CISA hasn’t been impacted as much as other states. However, he also said that when it comes to incident response and intel sharing, the relationship has “maybe diminished somewhat.”

Fontes was blunt, saying there has been “no change” in his state’s relationship with CISA since he spoke out in frustration last year, either in terms of outreach or technical assistance.

“If somebody said it’s business as usual, he’s full of s—t and lying,” he said. “That’s not true.”

2/04/2026: This story was updated after the National Conference of State Legislatures revised its timeline for CISA’s election services to states.

The post As feds pull back, states look inward for election security support appeared first on CyberScoop.

Following a federal raid on Fulton County, Georgia’s Elections Office, lawmakers and state election officials sharply criticized  the Trump administration, accusing the White House of chasing baseless internet conspiracy theories about fraud in the 2020 election. Officials also warned the raid could set a precedent for similar federal actions targeting the 2026 midterm elections.

According to Fulton County, federal officials seized 700 boxes of records related to the 2020 election, including physical ballots. The search warrant detailing a full list of records and evidence sought by the federal government remains sealed, however, details of the warrant were published by ProPublica Wednesday evening.

In a press conference Thursday, Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections Chair Sherri Allen said the county was already planning to hand over the information at a court hearing scheduled for early February. Meanwhile, Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts expressed concerns about ballot security now that the ballots are no longer in county custody.

At the National Association of Secretaries of State winter conference, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said the federal raid should be a reminder “this can happen any point between now and this coming November.”

He also took a shot at the Trump administration’s state voter data collection efforts and the White House’s plan to conduct voter list maintenance “at the federal level.”

“Republican and Democratic secretaries: How does that make you feel about what they think about your integrity and professionalism?” Padilla said. “Those are your offices, your staff and teams.”

Jared Borg, a White House aide at the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, gave a speech Thursday detailing how the Trump administration is repurposing the federal SAVE database as a voter citizenship verification tool.  The database was historically used to track immigrant benefits, and Borg said the DOGE-led overhaul of SAVE in 2025 came in response to requests from states for better functionality to cross-check voters. Previously, SAVE charged states $1 for each name lookup and did not allow bulk searches. Now, Borg said, state officials can run “millions of queries at no cost.”

Afterwards, Borg faced numerous questions and criticisms from state secretaries and officials who challenged the federal government’s role in setting election rules.

Some Republican state officials, like Utah Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson, pushed back hard against the Trump administration’s approach with election officials, pointing to comments from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and others.

“Things that have been said publicly, frankly, are quite appalling,” said Henderson, who oversees elections in her state. “She pretty much slandered all of us, and to me that’s problematic, to publicly claim that Secretaries of State are not doing our jobs and the federal government has to do it for us. That is not okay.”

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told CyberScoop that he believes the federal government’s efforts are to serve “the grievance of one person, because he’s a sore loser, and it’s embarrassing.”

“This is outrageous that we’re still relitigating what happened six or seven years ago from a guy who is currently president of the United States,” Fontes said in an interview.

While he’s confident in the integrity of Arizona’s elections should a similar federal raid occur, Fontes noted the “enormous amount of power” prosecutors have. 

“They can do enormous damage to the integrity of systems, to the trust that people have in systems, to personal lives, and they can do it through this purportedly legal framework,” he said.

Borg said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, would  provide further details on the administration’s plans during appearances at the conference on Friday.

Gabbard’s presence at the Fulton County raid has puzzled and alarmed veterans of ODNI’s election team and Democratic lawmakers. Among the concerned lawmakers is Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va, who sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee, which oversees ODNI. 

“Why is Tulsi Gabbard at an FBI raid on an election office in Fulton County?” asked Warner, who has long focused on election security issues, from boosting federal funding for states to replace outdated equipment and coordinating with ODNI’s election threats team.

By law, ODNI and its election team are supposed to focus on foreign threats from abroad, such as  disinformation campaigns and hack-and-leak operations carried out by hostile governments. Under the Biden administration, the office had a defined process for investigating, vetting and communicating intelligence about ongoing foreign threats to victims. The office also periodically updated Congress and the public about campaigns, including where they originated, what resources were being deployed and who was being targeted.

In these briefings, officials deliberately used neutral language and avoided partisan messaging to prevent the process from appearing politicized.

One possible rationale for Gabbard’s presence: right-wing media has circulated conspiracy theories that claim foreign countries like Venezuela, China or Italy conspired with the CIA and other federal agencies to remotely hack into U.S. voting machines. After U.S. forces raided Venezuela and removed President Nicolas Maduro from power, Trump retweeted a post about one such theory called “Hammer and Scorecard.”  Weeks earlier, Trump had suggested he intended to pursue prosecutions for election fraud.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has also directly connected ongoing immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota to the administration’s push to collect sensitive voter data from states––either voluntarily or through lawsuits. The administration and some states have used this data to aggressively challenge the eligibility of legally registered voters. These challenges often target voters over minor paperwork errors that are decades old. Experts overwhelmingly say such errors have no meaningful impact on voters’  active registration status.  

The administration has sued dozens of states, but has lost repeatedly in court. Multiple federal courts have ruled that the DOJ’s demands as legally baseless and are an unconstitutional overreach by the executive branch.

On Thursday, 26 Senate Democrats demanded briefings from Bondi and other administration officials to answer questions about the data gathering efforts. The senators noted that courts have already thrown out the administration’s lawsuits in Oregon and California.  Meanwhile, 11 states–including Texas–have provided the administration with voter data, which has “dramatically increased” the amount of voter information flowing to the federal government.

“While most states are resisting this illegal voter roll grab, we are gravely concerned by the amount of sensitive data the Department has already amassed on millions of American voters,” the senators wrote. “The Department has failed to provide Congress, or the public, any information on how it is maintaining this vast amount of data, the guardrails in place to protect state voter information, how the data is to be used, or who in the federal government has access to this sensitive data.”

The post Lawmakers, election officials blast Trump administration after Fulton County raid  appeared first on CyberScoop.

Congressional appropriators announced funding legislation this week that extends an expiring cyber threat information-sharing law and provides $2.6 billion for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), including money for election security and directives on staffing levels.

The latest so-called “minibus” package of several spending bills to keep the government funded past a Jan. 30 deadline would extend the Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Act of 2015 through the end of the current fiscal year, Sept. 30. Industry and the Trump administration have been seeking a 10-year extension of a law that provides legal protections for sharing cyber threat data between companies and the government, but a deal on Capitol Hill has proven elusive.

The package, announced Tuesday, also would extend the expiring State and Local Cybersecurity Grants Program through the end of fiscal 2026. Both laws temporarily expired during the government shutdown before being included in broader government funding legislation that extended them through Jan. 30. The House Homeland Security Committee has approved legislation on a long-term extension of the grants program, but the Senate hasn’t taken any action on it.

Also notably, the “minibus” — with funding for Labor and Health and Human Services; Education and related agencies; Defense; Homeland Security; and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and related agencies — includes an extension until Sept. 30 for the Technology Modernization Fund, a program focused on upgrading old and vulnerable federal tech that likewise has had difficulties getting an extension.

The legislation that funds the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would provide $2.6 billion for CISA. The agency’s budget coming into the Trump administration stood at approximately $3 billion, and President Donald Trump sought nearly half a billion dollars less than that for fiscal 2026.

Under the bill, $39.6 million would go to continuing election security programs, namely election security advisers in each CISA region across the country and the continuation of the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC). Last spring, the organization that supports the EI-ISAC said it no longer was doing so after the Trump administration terminated funding, with DHS saying the EI-ISAC no longer aligns with its mission.

Despite going along with much of what Trump sought on the CISA budget total, the DHS funding bill gives the department a commandment on CISA staffing levels, which have been significantly reduced under the president.

“CISA shall maintain a workforce consistent with the personnel and FTE [full-time employee] funded by the pay and non-pay amounts provided in this Act,” according to a joint explanatory statement from appropriators. “CISA shall not reduce staffing in such a way that it lacks sufficient staff to effectively carry out its statutory missions, including cybersecurity and infrastructure security for the Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies, SLTT [state, local, tribal and territorial] partners, Sector Risk Management Agencies, international partners, and other stakeholders.”

The House Appropriations Committee touted the DHS spending bill in a news release, saying that “from our borders and ports to aviation and cyber, we deliver the personnel, training, and technology to reinforce our security at every level.”

The fate of the minibus depends on a number of factors, among them the thin GOP House majority and rising Democratic opposition to funding for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

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A federal court has thrown out a lawsuit brought by the Trump administration attempting to force the state of California to turn over sensitive voter data.

The decision, issued by the U.S. Central District Court of Southern California, is a major setback to the federal government’s massive data collection effort on American voters, and its argument that existing civil rights laws permit it to demand that information from states in the name of election integrity.

The ruling, signed by Judge David Carter, called voting “a fundamental political right” and stated flatly: “the government’s request is unprecedented and illegal.”

Carter noted that the civil rights laws the Department of Justice cited to justify its demand for the records were “to protect hard won civil rights victories allowing access to the ballot box,” not to give the executive branch or president unfettered access to voter data.

The opinion also described the breadth and scope of the government’s request as “unprecedented,” noting it was seeking information such as names, social security numbers, home addresses, voting history and “other sensitive information” for nearly 23 million Californians. While California officials offered the federal government redacted versions of the information, DOJ’s lawsuit asked for the full, unredacted copies of the records.

“The pieces of legislation at issue in this litigation were not passed as an unrestricted means for the Executive to collect highly sensitive information about the American people,” Carter wrote. “It is not for the Executive, or even this Court to authorize the use of civil rights legislation as a tool to forsake the privacy rights of millions of Americans. That power belongs solely to Congress.”

Last September, the federal government sued California Secretary of State Shirely Weber—one of dozens of state officials facing federal lawsuits for  refusing to hand over unredacted voter data. The federal government claims the lawsuits are meant to ensure “clean” voter rolls and deter noncitizen voting and voter fraud, but neither it nor Trump have ever been able to prove their claims in court.

Election and legal experts have predicted that the administration’s efforts to compel states to hand voter records over to the federal government would face serious pushback in the courts, as the constitution explicitly empowers states and Congress to manage elections.

The League of Women Voters of California, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California brought a joint countersuit on behalf of voters to halt the DOJ’s demands. The groups argued state laws and federal privacy protection prohibited the disclosure of highly sensitive voter data.

In a joint statement following the decision, the groups hailed the win and said it “affirms that the federal government is not entitled to unfettered access to private voter data.”

“Voters should never have to choose between their privacy and their fundamental right to vote,” the statement said. “States must retain authority to manage elections in ways that safeguard sensitive information, and federal agencies must respect the limits on their power.”

Carter also issued a stark warning about the impact of adopting the Trump administration’s legal logic on ballot access, saying that “the taking of democracy does not occur in one fell swoop; it is chipped away piece-by piece until there is nothing left.”

“The case before the Court is one of these cuts that imperils all Americans,” Carter wrote. The erosion of privacy and rolling back of voting rights is a decision for open and public debate within the Legislative Branch, not the Executive. The Constitution demands such respect, and the Executive may not unilaterally usurp the authority over elections it seeks to do so here.”

The administration’s demand to states like California “goes far beyond what Congress intended” when it passed the underlying civil rights laws cited in the government’s justification, and citizens would rightly fear that the data could be misused by “executive fiat.”

“The centralization of this information by the federal government would have a chilling effect on voter registration which would inevitably lead to decreasing voter turnout as voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose,” Carter wrote in his conclusion.

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The surprise raid by U.S. armed forces and law enforcement agencies in Caracas, Venezuela had observers around the world scouring social media and news for updates on an operation that saw Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife captured and flown to the United States to face criminal charges.

The Trump administration initially offered few details about the attack and reportedly declined to notify allies or the bipartisan Gang of Eight in Congress ahead of time. The information vacuum regarding the U.S. action and the motivations behind them was quickly filled by online accounts posting realistic looking but fake images and videos, right wing disinformation artists connecting the operation to debunked conspiracies of Venezuela remotely manipulating U.S. voting machines and widespread messaging in online Spanish-speaking groups depicting the U.S. as an aggressive, imperialist power seeking to control the resources of other countries.

In the early morning hours after the operation, fake imagery and media quickly flooded social media. A grainy image falsely depicted Maduro in a suit being escorted off an aircraft by camo-clad DEA agents, only for the White House to later stage and post its own (real) perp walk of Maduro online.

Guyte McCord, CEO of disinformation research firm Graphika, told CyberScoop they are observing high volumes of fairly standard activity online, from AI generated videos to ‘recycled’ footage from past conflicts being rebranded as current events.

“What we’re seeing so far is quite typical for high-attention geopolitical events: tactics designed to shape narratives and generate engagement while the ground truth remains fluid,” McCord said in a statement.

In the comment section of that White House post, users quickly posted their own realistic looking AI-altered videos, inserting other world leaders like Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Maduro’s place, or depicting a distressed Maduro begging for his life in English while surrounded by DEA officials. A series of mislabeled and fake videos collected by the BBC’s Shayan Sardarizadeh include other depictions of Maduro’s capture that were generated through AI and spread online.

Narrative setting focused on oil, U.S. imperialism

Groups like the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas track narratives in Latin American online spaces. The nonprofit typically monitors around 3,300 Spanish-language WhatsApp and Telegram groups, but expanded to roughly 100,000 groups to capture additional English-speaking channels discussing the Venezuela raid.

According to Cristina Tardáguila, an analyst and disinformation researcher at DDIA, the early narrative that gained widespread traction after the raid was that the US intervention “is a thinly veiled mission to seize Venezuela’s oil wealth.”

“These posts claim that President Trump has already designated American companies to manage the country’s petroleum reserves, something he affirmed,” wrote Tardáguila. “This theme characterizes the operation as ‘theft’ and ‘robbery,’ dismissing humanitarian or democratic justifications.”

Adam Darrah, a former CIA analyst who spent eight years tracking Russian disinformation operations, told CyberScoop that both Russia and China have long maintained close relations with Venezuela, viewing the country “as a beachhead into the United States’ very powerful sphere in influence here in the Western hemisphere.”

“You have these great powers going and competing for hearts and minds, and that’s what I’m seeing,” said Darrah, now vice president of intelligence at cybersecurity firm ZeroFox. “I’m seeing three adversarial governments, two of which are trying to maintain a beachhead” that is “gone, at least for now.”  

After the attack, Darrah said he has seen mouthpieces on both sides scramble to respond, leaning heavily on past narratives that portray the United States. as an imperialist aggressor, themes that were refined during the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

But Tardáguila also acknowledged that the administration has not put forth clear messaging, with Trump himself saying Venezuela stole its oil reserves from the U.S.

Compounding this, she also noted that “President Donald Trump did not cite human rights or democracy in his press conference” following the attack.

Darrah told CyberScoop that like most disinformation, he believes the AI generated videos being spread around Venezuela and Maduro are more about reinforcing existing beliefs and keeping supporters  in line, rather than persuade new people or fool skeptics. 

“I have family members that clearly believe in AI-generated content…as long as the [content] makes them feel better about hating the thing they hate or loving the thing they love,” he said. “They don’t really care that it’s poorly or well done.”

A conspiracy theory lurches back to life

Domestically, some allies of President Trump quickly tied the Caracas attack to a long-running conspiracy about the 2020 election involving Venezuela and U.S. voting machines. 

Benny Johnson, a right-wing activist who has promoted claims that Dominion and Smartmatic were involved in a Venezuelan plot to alter vote counts for Joe Biden, suggested the U.S. targeted Maduro in part because he “knows where all the bodies are buried” with regards to the 2020 election.

“This is why you see the globalists around the world bricking in their pants,” Johnson said.  “They’re terrified because Venezuela was ground zero for election theft.” 

The Trump campaign lost dozens of lawsuits claiming fraud following the 2020 election and media outlets like Fox News, NewsMax as well as Trump campaign lawyers Rudi Giuliani and Sidney Powell eventually settled multibillion dollar lawsuits brought by Smartmatic and Dominion and publicly acknowledged they had no proof for their claims.

While administration officials have described the Caracas incursion as a law enforcement operation and have not cited the 2020 election, Trump himself posted a two-minute video clip without comment early Monday of people alleging Dominion voting machines were manipulated in the election to favor Biden.

The post AI, voting machine conspiracies fill information vacuum around Venezuela operation  appeared first on CyberScoop.

The Department of Justice is suing Fulton County, Georgia and its election clerk over the county’s refusal to hand over voter records, part of a larger nationwide project to collect as much election and voter information as possible from state and local governments ahead of the 2026 and 2028 elections.

In a lawsuit announced Thursday, DOJ officials said they were suing Fulton County clerk of courts Ché Alexander, arguing that Alexander had a legal duty under the Civil Rights Act to hand over the information as the Department investigates what it claims are potential county violations of the National Voter Registration Act and Help America Vote Act.

In court documents filed with the Northern District of Georgia, Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division and Eric Neff, Acting Chief of the division’s voting rights section, argued that the court should not “adjudicate the factual foundation for, or the sufficiency of, the Attorney General’s ‘statement” or “the basis and the purpose’ contained in the written demand.”  They also argued the court should not scrutinize the scope of the data requested in the subpoena.

“The Attorney General need only show that she made a ‘written demand’ for records covered by Section 301 of the [Civil Rights Act] and that ‘the person against whom an order for production is sought … has failed or refused” to make such papers available for inspection, reproduction or copying,” wrote Dhillon and Neff.

In October, DOJ subpoenaed the county for “all used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County.” It cited a request from the Georgia State Election Board to investigate “anomalies” in the 2020 election and the refusal of county officials to hand over the data or respond to federal demands.

The lawsuit against Fulton is one of dozens of lawsuits, investigations, and demands for voter data that the DOJ is pursuing ahead of the 2026 midterm and 2028 presidential elections.

On the same day it announced it was suing Fulton County, the Civil Rights Division added four more states – Colorado, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Nevada — to a growing lawsuit challenging election officials across the country to turn over voter registration data to the federal government. That brings the total number of states DOJ is suing to 18.

According to an online tracker created by the Brennan Center for Justice, DOJ has sent demands to at least 40 states for voter registration data since May, and most have rejected at least some, if not all, the requested records. Just two states, Indiana and Wyoming, have fully complied with the requests.

“Nearly all states that have replied to the DOJ’s requests have not shared their full voter registration databases,” wrote authors Kaylie Martinez-Ochoa, Eileen O’Connor and Patrick Berry. “Instead, most states have provided the publicly available version (which do not include Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers) or have not provided the voter registration lists at all.”

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President Donald Trump announced Thursday his intention to issue a federal pardon for an individual convicted in connection with efforts related to challenging the 2020 election results. However, on this occasion, the person in question will remain behind bars.

In a statement on Truth Social, Trump said he was pardoning Tina Peters, a former Mesa County election clerk currently serving a nine-year prison sentence for facilitating a data breach involving voting system data in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

“Democrats have been relentless in their targeting of TINA PETERS, a Patriot who simply wanted to make sure our Elections were Fair and Honest,” Trump wrote Thursday. “Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the ‘crime’ of demanding Honest Elections. Today, I am granting Tina a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election!”

Peters’ leaks revealed no evidence of voter fraud, and the incident is widely viewed as one of the most serious breaches of election system security in modern history.

But more importantly, Trump’s pardon powers only extend to federal crimes and would not apply to Peters, who was tried and convicted by the state of Colorado. That means Peters’ sentence will remain valid and in full effect even if a federal pardon is issued.

State officials do have the power to release Peters, but have been adamant that she was lawfully and rightfully convicted by a jury of her peers and remains unrepentant for her crimes.

While the actual language of Peters’ pardon has yet to be released, the Trump White House has seemingly acknowledged in the past that the president has no legal authority to free Peters for state-level crimes.

In May, Trump unsuccessfully called for Colorado officials to release Peters from prison and directed his Department of Justice to “take all necessary steps” to assist in the matter while referring to her as a “political prisoner.” These initial messages did not mention or threaten a pardon, and strongly implied that the decision was legally up to Colorado state officials.

At the time, Colorado Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser, who Trump called “radical left,” told CyberScoop that Peters’ sentence was a reflection of the severity of her crimes and that federal efforts to overturn it would not deter them. He reiterated that stance in an interview when asked if Colorado would turn Peters over to federal authorities while any potential court challenges play out.

“No, there’s no legal authority for any federal government action to take a prisoner who is in state custody, lawfully having been tried, convicted and sentenced,” Weiser told Denver, Colorado’s 9News. “This is an important principle of our Constitution, and everyone who says they care about the rule of law, about public safety and our constitution needs to care about this issue.”

That position was backed up by Democratic Governor Jared Polis, the only U.S. official with the legal power to pardon Peters for her crimes.

 “Tina Peters was convicted by a jury of her peers, prosecuted by a Republican District Attorney, and found guilty of violating Colorado state laws, including criminal impersonation,” Polis wrote on BlueSky. “No President has jurisdiction over state law nor the power to pardon a person for state convictions.”

While Trump has been unable to free Peters, he has used his presidential powers to wipe away criminal convictions for thousands of individuals who assisted him in his quest to overturn the 2020 election, including a mass pardon of more than 1,500 Americans who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory.

A slate of pardons issued by Trump in November included two attorneys – Kenneth Chesbro and Jim Troupis – who were part of an attempted scheme to create an alternate slate of Republican electors who would falsely submit to Congress that Trump was the true winner of Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential contest. Trump also pardoned a number of other Wisconsin Republican officials who had offered themselves up as fake electors.

At Peters’ sentencing last year, one month before Trump would be elected to a second term, neighbors and public officials alike testified about the harm her actions caused to them and the broader Mesa community.

In handing down his sentence, Judge Matthew Barrett called Peters a “charlatan” who had expressed no remorse for her actions or their damage.

“I’m convinced you’d do it all over again,” Barrett said.

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Politicization of intelligence in the Trump administration, as well as the “hollowing out” of government expertise, is leaving the United States dangerously vulnerable to cyberattacks and other threats, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a floor speech Thursday.

Mark Warner of Virginia chastised the president over what he called the politically-motivated personnel decisions that he said jeopardized national security, including layoffs of one-third of the workforce at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, the firing of a top FBI cyber official and the vacant leadership at the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command.

“One-third of CISA, the agency established for the absolutely explicit purpose of protecting our critical infrastructure — water, power, our elections — to prevent those entities from being attacked by cyber tools, a third of that agency, fired,” Warner said. 

The administration has eliminated election security workers at CISA, he noted — rolling back improvements innovated when Trump was first president.

“The irony is stark: despite persistent efforts by China, Russia, Iran and other adversaries, the 2020 presidential election was one of the most secure in history, thanks in large part due to steps taken during the Trump administration’s first term to safeguard our critical infrastructure,” he said. “Yet now, much of that hard-won protection has been dismantled, leaving Americans more vulnerable than ever.”

Warner criticized the firing of Michael Nordwall, the former head of the FBI’s criminal cyber response branch that oversees the bureau’s fight against ransomware, online fraud and more.

He also criticized the firing of former NSA/Cyber Command boss Tim Haugh, and his deputy, Wendy Noble, “at the behest of the conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.” Warner pointed out that those positions remain vacant, after the firings occurred in April. Many national security firings have come in retaliation for work under the prior administration to which Trump objected, or even because the fired personnel are friendly with administration critics, he said.

The cutbacks and firings are happening at a time when Trump administration national security leaders are warning about cyberattacks and malign foreign influence from China, Russia and Iran, in addition to non-cyber threats, Warner said.

“Firing agents who investigate terrorists, foreign spies, cyber hackers and child predators does not make America safer, especially when the president’s own intelligence officials warn, publicly and repeatedly, of the many threats facing our nation,” he said.

If the administration fails to keep classified information safe, if it fails to protect critical infrastructure, “We will beat the costs later,” Warner said. “A cost that could be catastrophic.”

A National Security Council spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the past, Trump administration officials have characterized firings and government layoffs as necessary for getting those agencies focused on their primary missions, and has refuted allegations of politicizing intelligence, saying it was the Biden administration that did so instead.

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Forty Democratic members of the House and Senate issued a joint letter Wednesday to 19 states led by Democratic governors, urging them to block Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies from accessing driver’s license and registration data in their states.

The letter, led by Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., to follow the lead of states like New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Washington in pulling out of data sharing agreements with a state-led consortium known as The International Justice and Public Safety Network (NIets), a nonprofit that shares state data with police agencies.

 Doing so, the members argued, will protect citizens of their states from federal overreach by “federal agencies that are now acting as Trump’s shock troops.”

“This common sense step will improve public safety and guard against Trump officials using your state’s data for unjustified, politicized actions, while still allowing continued collaboration on serious crimes,” the congressional Democrats’ wrote.

Citing data provided to Congress by NIets, between Oct. 1, 2024 and Oct. 1 2025, the consortium processed over 290 million requests for state DMV data across 18,000 federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments in the US and Canada. Those requests included nearly 300,000 from ICE and another 605,000 by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), an agency housed within the Department of Homeland Security.

While states can choose what data they share with NIets, the letter claims that the Arizona Department of Public Safety “provides law enforcement agencies outside your state with real time access to your state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) database, which includes driver’s licenses and other state issued ID cards” through NIets. This effectively means that whatever states share with Arizona are subsequently sent to law enforcement agencies around the country.

““To be clear, blocking agencies’ unfettered access to your state’s data through Nlets will not prevent federal law enforcement from obtaining information needed to investigate serious crimes, but taking these measures will significantly increase accountability and reduce abuse by permitting your state employees to review data requests from blocked agencies first,” the members wrote.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Public Safety referred CyberScoop to the Arizona Department of Transportation, which manages the state’s Motor Vehicles Division.

While all 50 states and Washington D.C. allow law enforcement to look up DMV data using a driver’s license number, at least 20 states and D.C. allow searches by name and date of birth, something congressional Democrats warned could facilitate broader dragnet-style surveillance.

Additionally, 41 states share driver’s license photos with law enforcement upon request, something that could feed facial recognition software programs around the country. Agencies like ICE have developed massive facial recognition databases that play a central role in immigration enforcement and citizenship validation, according to 404 Media, though it’s not clear if that database includes driver’s license photos.

Officials at DHS and the Department of Government Efficiency also made numerous technical updates this year to another federal database, the Systemic Alien Verification System (SAVE), to check the citizenship of voters. The database was altered to allow states to run bulk searches and merged with Social Security data, and the federal government has spent the past year collecting or demanding more state-level data on voters, including DMV information.

The letter urges Democratic governors to consult with their state NIets coordinator, stating the belief that due to technical complexities with how the system works and how requests are processed, many states may not even be aware of what they’re doing.

“Because of the technical complexity of Nlets’ system, few state government officials understand how their state is sharing their residents’ data with federal and out-of-state agencies,” they wrote. “Critically, it seems apparent that elected officials accountable to voters, including governors, attorneys general, and legislators have not been fully briefed on the current scale of state information sharing with ICE and other federal agencies, nor the availability of technical controls to restrict data sharing with these federal agencies.”

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The federal cybersecurity system is weathering a series of crises that couldn’t have arrived at a worse time. The F5 security breach from Oct. 15, the proposed elimination of more than 1,000 jobs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the ongoing federal government shutdown have created a perfect storm that is not only leaving critical vulnerabilities exposed across the nation’s digital infrastructure, but it’s also weakening the workforce meant to defend it.

On its own, each of these events is serious, but when combined, they are threatening to push an already strained federal cyber defense posture to its breaking point.

The F5 incident was not another routine software breach. Security researchers and federal officials have called it a nation-state–level compromise that could have a cascading impact. In this incident, a China-linked espionage group  accessed F5 source code and undisclosed vulnerabilities, gaining access to a detailed blueprint for crafting custom exploits capable of bypassing traditional defenses. Because the company’s BIG‑IP software is used by many of the world’s largest enterprises, including federal agencies, defense contractors, hospitals, and utilities, the breach has national implications.

CISA’s emergency directive ordering agencies to patch affected systems reflects the severity of the threat. It also highlights a deeper issue—federal cyber defense relies too heavily on reactive approaches that are no longer effective in battling adversaries who are moving faster, hiding deeper, and automating their attacks.

Or under normal conditions, this reactive approach would be an uphill battle. But, as most of us now know, CISA is facing potential cuts of more than 1,000 positions and funding cuts totaling nearly half a billion dollars. This includes jobs directly tied to incident response, stakeholder engagement, regional operations, and election security—the very jobs that ensure resilience across the federal, state, and local cyber ecosystem. 

The timing could not be worse. Since 2018, CISA has been the connective tissue of our national cyber defense. It links intelligence from federal agencies with state governments and private-sector partners. These massive cuts will jeopardize the entire framework that coordinates national response during cyber crises.

One area to keep an eye on is election security. The proposed cuts include 14 positions responsible for protecting election systems. These jobs are specifically focused on helping state and local officials manage ransomware threats, disinformation, and potential interference. Now, as a contentious election year looms, these risks are escalating due to the growth in AI-driven misinformation and deepfake-based social engineering campaigns. Reducing federal support now creates a serious national security vulnerability.

By furloughing employees, halting procurement, and delaying guidance, agencies are operating with skeleton crews and depleted morale. For nation-state operators, this expanding attack surface and declining oversight are creating a huge window of opportunity.

The personal toll on federal cybersecurity professionals cannot be overstated.

Federal cybersecurity professionals already face high burnout due to intense operational demands. The ongoing exodus during the shutdown means that valuable institutional knowledge is being lost as experienced experts depart. This comes at a time when there is already a severe shortage of cybersecurity workers in the government sector. Recruiting them back will be difficult, especially as many are likely to pursue more stable opportunities elsewhere.

The time to react is now

These overlapping crises reveal a fundamental problem: the United States relies on a reactive cybersecurity approach built for a slower, more predictable past—not today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape. With sophisticated attacks now driven by persistent nation-states, supply chain vulnerabilities, and automated exploits, we need to prioritize prevention over mere response. While patching vulnerabilities and conducting forensic investigations after incidents remain important, they can no longer be the foundation of our national cyber defense.

 A prevention-first strategy focuses on reducing the initial attack surface, spotting anomalies before they escalate into breaches, and designing resilience directly into our systems. This shift also requires treating cyber readiness as a critical workforce and policy issue—not just a technical one. Federal defenders need stable resources, ongoing training, and consistent policies to stay effective. Cybersecurity cannot be managed as a discretionary budget line that fluctuates with political cycles.

For policymakers, the key lesson is that true cyber resilience requires both sustained capacity and continuity—not just the latest technology. An understaffed or demoralized cyber workforce cannot defend an expanding digital landscape. Meanwhile, the private sector must prepare to operate more independently, especially during government shutdowns. This means investing in preventative security measures, strengthening identity and supply chain protections, and ensuring communication channels remain open even if federal support is temporarily reduced.

As private organizations become more proactive, the federal government must also move beyond outdated cybersecurity practices, fragmented funding, and inconsistent standards. The recent F5 incident highlighted that when crucial parts of our digital infrastructure are compromised, no single agency can manage the consequences alone.

The perfect time to reset

The convergence of the F5 breach, CISA workforce cuts, and the ongoing shutdown exposes the fragility of the country’s cybersecurity approach. But let’s pause and look at the positive side of things. These events offer an opportunity to reset our defenses by moving beyond post-incident response and toward strengthening prevention, stabilizing the workforce, and ensuring interagency collaboration can continue even under fiscal strain.

Resilience must start before the breach, not after. To withstand the next wave of nation-state and supply chain attacks, the U.S. must treat cybersecurity as a readiness discipline built on prevention, continuity, and people. The perfect storm is still avoidable—but only if action replaces complacency. Time is running out.

Brad LaPorte is the Chief Marketing Officer at Morphisec.

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